Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
by Somnacin
Summary: Charles finds out why Raven confronted him in the kitchen, and confronts Erik.  Set the night before the Cuban Missile Crisis  X-Men: First Class 'verse .


**First Class is not mine. I don't even know...Brian Singer has ruined me.**

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><p>Charles shrugs out of his cardigan, the carefully ironed pants, the perfectly pressed shirt, and into his striped pyjamas. They're soft and blue, like when he was a little boy and found Raven in his kitchen pretending to be his mother, and doing a damn sight better than the real thing. Raven would laugh if she saw them now, roughly twice the size of the ones from the night they met, and he reflexively shrugs into the robe he found in a store somewhere around Oxford. It smells like the inside of his closet, which equates to aftershave and dry-cleaning, and he reflects that it has been too long since he came home.<p>

Safely sealed into his bedroom, Charles extends his mind, gently searching the rest of the house for movement. Hank is a blur of thought, of desperation; he is most likely in the laboratory finishing up their equipment _(go to sleep)_. Alex is sound asleep, his arms curled tightly over his chest; he is afraid of the power, afraid that it can never be controlled or used for anything but destruction (_calm your mind)_. Sean is sitting in front of his mirror, rubbing at his skinny throat; he is wondering if he can slip out to the dish and practice flying again (_not without the suit__). _Raven is reading in bed; she is thinking of caged tigers and a hard, sarcastic mouth. _Erik._

The object of his little sister's affection is not in the house, and for a moment Charles thinks that perhaps he isn't even in Westchester, that he abandoned them for Cuban waters and his jailer, his creator. He anxiously casts his mind out over the grounds, searching for that distinctive, gnarled brightness...and with a great rush of relief, finds Erik standing under a tree behind the house. The metal-bender shakes his head once, sharply, thinks _Stay out of my head, Charles._

_Alright. _Charles unlocks the door of his room and slips out into the hushed mustiness of the corridor, avoiding each creaky floorboard, noting each shift of light under the doors of his fellow mutants. Sean's room darkens as he passes, and Hank's door is ajar, although he senses the young man has moved there now. He hurries past Raven's room, past Erik's room (the door there is open too, and he can see the mussed bed, the Spartan bareness of it; Erik has been there for a little over a week, and he hasn't 'moved in' at all). The house is too big for them, too quiet on this last night, this calm before the storm. He is almost grateful to step outside, to have the air tug briskly at his robe and bare feet.

"Erik?" he whispers, padding over the grass towards the back of the house.

_I told you to stay out of my head, _Erik thinks.

"I'm not in your head, my friend," Charles replies.

The other man smiles once, a slash of moonlit brightness in his shadowed face; with his hard eyes and dark, concealing clothes, he blends in perfectly with his surroundings. Only a fool would notice him when he wasn't trying his utmost to be noticed.

"Charles." Just his name, nothing more.

"Mmm?" Charles moves to stand beside him, sees that Erik has no view at all, nothing to draw him out into the backyard.

"Your sister visited my room earlier."

"Yes, I saw. She enjoyed her visit a great deal."

"I sent her on her way afterwards, Charles. It was just a kiss."

"I appreciate that. She's been off-kilter lately," Charles says. "I caught her wandering around in her altogether earlier; she's never done that. There was always Mother, or a maid, or some college fellow about."

"She needs to be in her own skin," Erik replies. "You cannot imagine what it's like, having a mutation as physical as Raven's."

"Neither can you," the telepath points out.

_Touche, _Erik laughs inwardly, says outwardly,"It's cold out."

"Yes," Charles sighs. "This wet grass is doing nothing for my feet."

"Would you like me to carry you back inside, Charles?"

"There's no need to be sarcastic." He turns at the heel and starts to walk away-Erik will come inside when he wants to-when a hand closes on his shoulder. Erik has beautiful, unmistakable hands, scarred and calloused, the fingers long and delicate as a pianist's. In another life, he could have made a killing playing music; here he makes do as a killer. Charles slips this thought to his companion, and won't deny the small, vicious enjoyment he feels as a pained look steals over the other man's face.

"Ah, I wish you could understand-"

"I do understand. Erik, I'm on your side, you know that." Charles huffs out a breath, thrusts his hands into the pockets of his robe. "But killing Shaw will not make you a better man, and it won't help any of the people he's already ruined."

"Charles," Erik says softly, "When I said _we are the better men_...I wasn't including myself in that number. I know what I am. I know what I've done."

"My friend, _please_. What will you do after Shaw is dead? Who will you hunt?"

"Nobody. I'll live here and help teach the children, and their children's children, and maybe the ones after that, if you'll have me." The metal-bender's eyes are soft with an emotion Charles knows he doesn't quite understand, cannot name; hope.

The telepath takes a step back and defaults his expression, feels Erik withdraw his hand, stung by the silence. Charles can also feel him thinking, sense the knot of emotions flexing, testing the limits of their immaterial prison.

Then there's a faint, crowding pressure and Erik kisses his mouth.

Charles' eyes snap open, land fleetingly on Erik's fine nose, his forehead, the line of his jaw above the high-necked sweater; the hands he has pushed into his robe pockets are sweaty and shaking. _Charles, _Erik thinks_. Charles Charles Charles..._

"Inside," he says faintly. Then he and Erik are practically running, and the front door is opening and closing without either of them touching it and the corridor is whizzing silently past and the children are all asleep and then they are in Charles' room, and the door is closed and they are _free. _

Charles is aware of a sound, a sob caught in his own throat as Erik rounds on him and gives him another kiss, firmly, more certain of his being wanted this time. Charles feels one of Erik's hands catch in the small of his back, in the thick fabric of his robe, and the other press to the back of his head, knuckles digging into the wall. He opens his mouth, desperate, teeth clicking against Erik's and they are sharing breath, sharing the same beautiful, bottomless thirst. _I am not alone,_ and Erik is not even aware he is thinking it, wouldn't see the striking parallel to the night they first met.

"I'm here," Charles whispers into Erik's gasping, open mouth. "You're not alone."

The other man swallows Charles' promise, whispers one of his own into the shared space. _ I will never leave you. Never._ And a thousand thousand nights just like this one stretch out in Erik's mind, extending into Charles, who is consumed by the vision of a thousand thousand mornings, the polar opposite of the one they have to expect tomorrow. Their next kiss is hard, distracted, desperate; Charles claps his hand to the back of Erik's head and deepens it, licks into the hollow warmth of his lover's _(best friend, opposition, chess partner, mutant)_ mouth.

"Charles," Erik pulls away with a soft, slick noise, presses his lips into the curve of the little dapper man's neck. "Charles, what would you like me to do to you?"

The last piece of Charles Xavier's heart falls into place.


End file.
